The total solar installed capacity in India will cross 9 GW by the end of this year. By 2022, it is expected to increase to 100 GW. Which means the solar power sector is expected to grow at a remarkable CAGR of over 50% for the next 6 years. This also means that there is a humongous opportunity for companies and businesses to diversify into the green sector especially in the manufacturing side. Solar PV modules is one of the most critical components of a solar power system and contribute almost 50-60% of the cost of solar power plant. As a result, there is a keen interest prevalent in starting a module manufacturing plant in India.

Promoters of Goldi Green – SRK group – also thought on the same lines.

Shree Ramakrishna Exports (SRK group) is a leading diamond manufacturing and exporting company and also a site holder of the famous De Beers. They have four diamond manufacturing and three jewelry making units in India. Back in 2011, they realized that solar manufacturing has a high potential in India and hence diversified into this unrelated domain.

Goldi Green has its solar module manufacturing unit at Gujarat with an installed capacity of 125 MW per annum. It is one of the leading OEM PV Module Manufacturer for many Tier-1 and Tier-2 Indian & International brands. They are also into EPC services – 4.5 MW installations completed so far.

Apart from manufacturing the regular solar modules for the mass market, they also are keen in making innovative products like light weight modules, high efficiency compact modules etc (They launched these at REI 2016). Goldi Green is awarded as one of the Best 100 SME companies of India for Quality and growth.

Solar Mango team was able to catch up with Mr.Dhaval Patel of Goldi Green for a brief interview during the recent REI Expo 2016, held at Noida. A quick snapshot of the interview is given below:

Interview with Goldi Green

What are the key products and solutions Goldi Green provides to the Indian solar sector?

Goldi Green manufactures poly and mono crystalline solar modules ranging from 3 Wp to 340 Wp. We are also an EPC solutions provider operating in both utility scale and rooftop segments.

Which are the key end user segments for your products and solutions?

Government is one of our key buyers for both EPC and modules.

What are the highlights and USPs of your products and solutions?

We give customized solutions to our customers. Be it panels or EPC services, we are very flexible to give customized products and solutions. We also develop innovative products suitable for India.

Any future products and solutions you are coming up with for the Indian market?

We just launched some of our innovative new products at the REI – Light-weight solar modules made out of FRC. These 260 Wp panels weigh around 10.1 Kg each (Whereas usually it is around 18-20 Kg). We also launched 32 Cells compact modules with efficiency as high as 15%.

We have supplied to the Indian military, PCB type light weight solar modules – a total of 5000 panels that are absolutely breakage free.

What are the key learnings you have had from the Indian solar energy sector so far?

The Government business – Utility and rooftop scale projects are driven by very competitive bids and it is extremely difficult to drive decent margins. In order to cope up with this environment we need to quote very competitively.

What, according to you, are the key challenges faced by the Indian Solar market?

Price competition is too high. In the race to cheaper prices, quality is forgotten. This is a great challenge for us and for most people in the industry.